When the Suns' collective drug abuse, trafficking, and sports betting scandal erupted, the NBA playoffs still went on as scheduled.
The NBA tried to downplay the issue as much as possible while also ramping up promotion for this year's playoffs, creating momentum for the journey to the birth of a new champion.
A major highlight of this year's playoffs was whether the Portland Trail Blazers could break the seventeen-year curse of defending champions failing to win the championship and become another back-to-back championship team after the Celtics.
Although Gan Guoyang stunned everyone with an 81-point performance in the last game of the regular season, many people still favored the Lakers or the Celtics when it came to the playoffs.
They believed that the Trail Blazers relied too much on Ah Gan. Although last year's championship win also relied on Ah Gan, the Trail Blazers were clearly a very cohesive team.